This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled
"All four Gospels are anonymous in the formal sense that the author's name does not appear in the text of the work itself, only in the title (which we will discuss below).
Which is a problem since most NT authors and 1st century historians
did include their names in the text of their writings despite in most cases their intended audiences already knowing who they were. So you can kiss your predictable "they didn't mention their names because they already knew their audiences" excuse goodbye.
Therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude that the gospel authors
intentionally broke with standard practice, therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude they didn't want to be identified, therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude that desire to identify them only started with later generations. We can therefore be reasonable to conclude that we cannot possibly go wrong in fulfilliing the author's desires, and refusing to discuss their identifies, if we so choose.
And if god inspired the gospel authors, then god also didn't want them to include their names in those works, which means God is less interested in proving the human authorship of the gospels than today's apologists are. Hence it can be reasonable for the atheist to conclude that any "god" that might exist, wanted the written testimony to Jesus' resurrection to be of more dubious origin than as wished by today's apologists. Whose wishes are more important to respect?
But this does not mean that they were intentionally anonymous. Many ancient works were anonymous in the same formal sense, and the name may not even appear in the surviving title of the work. For example, this is true of Lucian's Life of Demonax (Demonactos bios), which as a bios (ancient biography) is generically comparable with the Gospels. Yet Lucian speaks throughout in the first person and obviously expects his readers to know who he is.
And by speaking in the first person, that much is clear. Unfortunately for you, none of the 4 gospels speaks in the first person. They always characterize the apostles in the third-person. It doesn't matter how you can spin that, and it doesn't matter that eyewitnesses "can" use third person, this doesn't automatically mean "eyewitness who is choosing to use the third-person". Third-person narrative usually automatically implies "the author was not one of the story characters", and the burden is rightfully on the fundie to overcome such presumption. You certainly cannot seriously say skeptics are unreasonable to infer anonymous authorship from the third-person writing style. Especially in light of the fact that we naturally and justifiably expect honest eyewitnesses to make it clear to the listeners that what they have to say is their own story, instead of asking the listeners to make imperfect judgment calls about how much tesitmony is "eyewitness" and how much is "later redactor modified this and modified that".
Such works would often have been circulated in the first instance among friends or acquaintances of the author who would know who the author was from the oral context in which the work was first read.
But that didn't stop apostle Paul and most other NT authors from identifying themselves. You may not like the fact that the gospel authors bucked the trend, because of the skeptical inferences that can be justified therefrom, but that's tough shit.
Knowledge of authorship would be passed on when copies were made for other readers, and the name would be noted, with a brief title, on the outside of the scroll or on a label affixed to the scroll.
That would also be true even if the belief about the author were merely the earlier copyist's best guess.
In denying that the Gospels were originally anonymous, our intention is to deny that they were first presented as works without authors.
Then you aren't combating
my specific type of gospel skepticism. I can allow for apostles authoring originals
without putting myself under intellectual obligation to credit the final canonical form entirely to said apostles. But if it is reasonable to say that various portions of the gospels originally came from later redactors, that is sufficient to justify skepticism toward their resurrection narratives, especially in light of the fact that scholars cannot agree on which portions of the gospels reveal redactional activity.
This idea that we have to show absolute anonymity before we can be reasonable to deny apostolic authorship, is total bullshit. Life is far more complex than what you get walking into a church...or a preschool.
The clearest case is Luke because of the dedication of the work to Theophilus (1:3), probably a patron.
Which is also a point of unending debate, since Theophilus could also be a mere metaphor for the entire church.
But even assuming it was a real individual person, the reasonable assumption is that Luke intended to write for that guy, and the burden is on YOU to show that Luke intended for anybody else to read that work (by which argument scumbag apologists suddenly discover the infallibility of saying Theophilus was a metaphor for a large group of people). As I've argued elsewhere, when you say the gospels were inspired by God, you are making reasonable those who attribute to god's
own will any of the human author's discernible intent. Unless you are a Calvinist and insist that just whatever happens is surely within the will of God, you cannot leap from "popular!" to "intended for the world!". Luke appears intended for the church, as it makes no effort to rebut the kind of objections skeptics would have made in the 1st century (i.e., Jesus' miracles are just tricks employed by hundreds of other "faith-healers", sometimes involving dishonest assistants and third persons).
It is inconceivable that a work with a named dedicatee should have been anonymous.
Not "inconceivable" if the author already knew the dedicatee.
The author's name may have featured in an original title, but in any case would have been known to the dedicatee and other first readers because the author would have presented the book to the dedicatee....In the first century CE, most authors gave their books titles, but the practice was not universal....
In the first century, most authors also identified themselves in the text of their work, and most NT authors do so, therefore, we are reasonable to conclude that the gospel authors made a
deliberate choice to avoid associating their names with their stories. Not exactly the definition of "reliable".
Whether or not any of these titles originate from the authors themselves, the need for titles that distinguished one Gospel from another would arise as soon as any Christian community had copies of more than one in its library and was reading more than one in its worship meetings....In the case of codices, 'labels appeared on all possible surfaces: edges, covers, and spines.' In this sense also, therefore, Gospels would not have been anonymous when they first circulated around the churches.
Even if you are correct, the very fact that Jerome says "many" in the early church thought the Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew" shows how little usefulness there was in the original gospels naming their authors...unless you wish to credit Matthew as the author of that heretical work?
A church receiving its first copy of one such would have received with it information, at least in oral form, about its authorship and then used its author's name when labeling the book and when reading from it in worship....no evidence exists that these Gospels were ever known by other names." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 300-301, 303)
But you don't know if they ever did so "label", you don't know how long they waited before producing the copies that might motivate them to attach labels, and yet it is equally reasonable to suppose that the oral tradition about the author is all the individual church community thought was necessary for several decades.
But again, so what? The fact that all church fathers never testify to a Greek Matthew but only Hebrew until Jerome makes it reasonable to assume they did not have any tradition that Matthew authored anything in Greek. You don't make that reasonableness disappear merely by trifling that maybe they just miraculously chose to focus only on the Hebrew original. Those were mostly Gentile churches, where the Greek Matthew would be used more had it been believed authored by Matthew.
"Nevertheless the fact remains that it is utterly improbable that in this dark period, at a particular place or through a person or through the decision of a group or institution unknown to us, the four superscriptions of the Gospels, which had hitherto been circulating anonymously, suddenly came into being and, without leaving behind traces of earlier divergent titles, became established throughout the church.
I'm not one of those who say the gospel titles suddenly came into being at a late stage. And once again, Matthew likely authored a less detailed "sayings-source", and this + anonymous scribe creating a Greek edition is why Matthew's name now appears on canonical Greek Matthew.
None of these trifles increase the probability that the gospel resurrection narratives escaped scribal modification, and if they didn't, then the gospel resurrection narratives lose significant historical value, since we are forced to conclude that at least some resurrection testimony has also been modified by later scribes.
Nevermind that more and more conservative inerrantists are admitting to Matthew mingling history and fiction in his resurrection narrative (i.e. "fiction" = "apocalyptic imagery").
Let those who deny the great age and therefore basically the originality of the Gospel superscriptions in order to preserve their 'good' critical conscience, give a better explanation of the completely unanimous and relatively early attestation of these titles, their origin and the names of authors associated with them.
I accept your challenge. As far as Matthew, he likely authored a Hebrew sayings-source that was later reworked into Greek by a redactor who added substantial blocks of "narrative", so that Matthew's resurrection testimony is infected with hearsay of unknown extent, rendering the skeptic reasonable, if they choose, to disregard it.
As far as Mark, I can allow that a guy named Mark wrote it, and Mark's tendency to abandon the ministry to the point that Paul didn't deem him a worthy missionary (Acts 15:38) might help explain why he deserted his own gospel and made Jesus' resurrection one of the least important aspects. The more Mark copied from Peter's preaching, the more "hearsay" it is, and since we cannot reasonably determine Mark's relation to Peter beyond debateable references in the NT, we have no reasonable way to gauge the reliability of such hearsay, thus justifying a skeptic, if they choose, to disregard it.
As far as Luke, if most Christian scholars are correct that Luke copies off Mark, then Luke was lying by omission in saying he consulted with eyewitnesses, since he leaves the impression that
everything in his gospel about Jesus draws from eyewitness sources. Mark was not an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry, especially if the fundies are correct that Mark is just a record of Peter's later preaching in Rome.
As far as John, enough Christian scholars admit much of what he puts in Jesus mouth was never actually mouthed by Jesus, to render reasonable the skeptic who says apostle John's authorship only hurts that gospel's reliability.
Such an explanation has yet to be given, and it never will be.
Bang on the pulpit, and yell "bless ma soul".
New Testament scholars persistently overlook basic facts and questions on the basis of old habits." (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], p. 55)
Wow, if even NT scholars "persistently" get things wrong, one reasonable option for a skeptic to exercise is to simply toss all NT scholarship in the trash as too complicated and convoluted for them to reasonably believe they will
ever be able to draw reasonably certain conclusions beyond what Jesus' gender was.
And since Triablogue says a lifetime of neutrality toward Jesus cannot protect the unbeliever from hell, the skeptic who exercise the above-stated option may as well avoid neutrality and tell himself David Hume already proved that miracles are impossible. Life is more fun if you go around thinking you'll never be held accountable by an invisible man living in the sky. It's also easier to sleep at night when you don't think there is a monster living under your bed.
